EUbits: Random House/Penguin merger confirmed, A look at some of the Essential Characters

It’s official.Random House and Penguin will be combined, parent companies Bertelsmann and Pearson confirmed today. Both Random House and Penguin have imprints that hold Star Wars book licenses, most notably Del Rey and DK. This isn’t the first time a publishing house with franchise connections has merged – In 1998, Bertelsmann bought Random House, whose Del Rey imprint had recently acquired the novel license from Bertelsmann’s Bantam.

Essential guides. The folks at Star Wars Books revealed some of Doug Wheatley’s art for the new Essential Characters. The book is currently set to come out next August.